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At the time the photos were taken, it had gears - a 5 speed SA rear hub. I then converted it to fixed gear, with a Powertap power meter track hub. The fixed gear system worked fine, but one of the few downsides of the Powertap track hub is that you can't use it to slow the bike down, at least not much. If you try to do a rad whip skid, the hub internals unscrew themselves and bad things happen quite quickly. I know this from personal experience, albeit not on that bike. So you can't really use the fixed gear to slow down, not much anyway.
Once I've finished building my new cross bike, the Brompton will be rebuilt with (amongst other changes) a 3 speed derailleur system and a freewheel hub. I'll be keeping the levers. They don't provide that much mechanical advantage, but IME it's enough.
So, tl;dr, no I don't agree. They do the job.
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Brommers
@marxist_vulcan
Looks beautiful...only did that once when learning to ride fixed...I learnt from the mistake...read somewhere that the eLever should only used in conjunction with another braking system, eg, fixed gear but not as the sole brake levers...would you agree with that assessment? The Brompton in the photo is fixed or multi geared?